I've been hearing and reading for many weeks this summer that one of the best hikes in this part of Central Oregon is the Canyon Creek Meadows loop hike at the base of Three-Fingered Jack in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area. Because this hike has been loved to death, you cannot just run up and hike it on a whim. You need a Central Cascades Wilderness Permit which involves heading over to recreation.gov and rolling the dice. I did just so in early August and we got two tickets ten days out.
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| Jack Lake and Three-Fingered Jack |
With this much lead time, you cannot pick your weather window. You roll the dice and you go with the weather you get. In Central Oregon in the summer time given our almost total lack of rain, weather is generally not an issue, except for blazing heat and wildfire smoke. Knock on wood: we've only had a couple bad smoke days and that wasn't in play for our hike. But wouldn't you know that moisture rolled in from the ocean giving us gray skies and spitting rain drops all day? Abnormally high humidity aside, this turned out to be a good thing in that we did not get fried under the blazing sun while navigating the exposed flanks of Three-Fingered Jack.
The 18th of August would not have been my preferred date to visit this area to view wildflowers. General consensus is that the ideal timing would be right at the end of July for maximum bloom and minimal mosquitoes. That said, I do not think that Ann and I have any complaints this year about the timing. Sure the vast meadows of lupines and the big stands of beargrass are bloomed out, but every turn in the trail up in the meadows left us slack-jawed. The wildflowers as you will see in the photos below were stunning.
The hike starts at the Jack Lake Trailhead. Getting there from our house in Bend took about an hour and fifteen minutes despite it being only 50 miles from the house. Navigating washboard dirt roads doesn't go all that quickly, even in a 4x4 truck. We headed west on US 20 past Sisters, about 2/3 of the way between Sisters and Santiam Pass, just before Suttle Lake, where we turned north off the highway and wound our way up to the parking area at Jack Lake. The roads were washboarded in places, but I thought they were in fine shape overall. You could make the drive in a 2-wheel drive car if you had no better vehicle.
From the parking area, we headed right around the north side of Jack Lake. On the far side of the lake, the trail forks left and right forming a loop. Because of so much traffic on the trails, the Forest Service asks hikers to stay left at the fork and return via the other trail. After forking left, the trail bent back northwest until we reached Canyon Creek. At the creek, you can return back to the car park by forking right and taking the other half of the loop, or you can continue following the creek upstream towards its source from snowmelt off Three-Fingered Jack, almost due north of Santiam Pass.
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After the 2003 B&B Complex Fire,
Very Short Stands of Lodgepole Pines |
At this point in the tale, I should now mention that the first time that I went to snap a photo, my camera would not turn on. Checking the battery compartment, I found no battery. I could have sworn that I put it in, but no. It was sitting by the charger when I returned home. Doh! I put in the backup battery (an aftermarket battery that has very little lifespan when compared to the OEM-supplied battery) that I carry in the hip-belt of my pack. It reminded me of the film days: very careful composition and only shooting decent shots. I managed to husband the battery through the entire hike, though.
And, one more aside. Remember the washboard? At the first water break, I asked Ann to pull the water bottle out of the side pocket of my pack. "What water bottle?" she asked. It had bounced out of my pack on the bumpy road and was in the back floorboard of the truck. I did not catch this when I put on my pack. Note to my future self. Fortunately, Ann had a full water bladder in her pack. That, and it was a relatively easy hike on a gray and relatively cool day.
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| First Good View of Highly Eroded Three-Fingered Jack |
Walking through the burned out section was instructive in its own way. I am always amazed at the way a forest regenerates after having been burned. On the walk out on the outbound half of the loop, it seemed to be the province of the asters and the bear grass, neither of which would be here if the forest had not burned, both being edge species. I am decidedly no good at identifying asters (by which I mean most ray flowers), but I sure enjoy their beauty in the late summer and fall. I expected to see a lot more fireweed (which gets its name from being the first to colonize burned areas), but I didn't see very much the entire day.
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| A Glorious Deep Mauve Aster |
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| A Very Different Aster |
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| Scarlet Gilia, Ipomopsis aggregata |
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| Glaucous Penstemon, Penstemon euglaucus |
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| Burn Area Colonized by Bear Grass, Xerophyllum tenax |
Once through the dry burn area, we entered the woods again and I was surprised to see a lot of Douglas Fir among the Mountain Hemlocks. I usually think of Doug Fir as a west-side species (even though there are a few along the Deschutes Canyon in Bend) but I supposed that this area is moist enough for them. As the ground became moister, we started to see a few sporadic Arrowleaf Groundsels and other flowers that would hint at the beauty to come farther on up the trail.
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| Bush Oceanspray, Holodiscus dumosus |
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| A Pond Upstream of Jack Lake |
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| First Good View of Mount Jefferson |
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| Pacific Tree Frog |
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| Arrowleaf Groundsel, Senecio triangularis |
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| Aster-Lined Grass Meadow Before Reaching Canyon Creek |
After winding through the damper woods, we came out into a fairly damp meadow before we came to Canyon Creek itself. At the creek, we went left, upstream, to continue our hike. At just about this point, the Forest Service stops maintaining the trail, but this is the point where all the fun starts. We followed the creek almost due west, climbing easily but steadily up to the base of Three-Fingered Jack, passing through a series of delightfully lush wildflower-decorated meadows.
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| The Fun Begins Here! |
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| A Teaser of the Color to Come |
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| Canyon Creek: Lupines and Senecio |
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| Western Columbine, Aquilegia formosa |
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| All Along the Creek: Lewis' Monkeyflower, Erythranthe lewisii |
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| Close Enough to See the Striations in Three-Fingered Jack |
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| Unmistakable Magenta Paintbrush, Castilleja parviflora |
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| Broadleaf Arnica, Arnica latifolia |
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| Still Life with Blue Chicken |
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| Climbing Ever Higher |
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| Large Clumps of Pink Mountain-Heather, Phyllodoce empetriformis |
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| Snow: the Source of Canyon Creek |
At the tree line at the base of Three-Fingered Jack, Ann and I parted ways. Her balance is not the greatest and she has real problems with scree fields and the like, especially coming back down. I continued scrambling up to the saddle ridge crossing a small snow field and then rising above a small cirque lake. At the top, I had nice views of the Sisters and Black Butte to the south and a decent view of Mount Jefferson to the north, despite the hazy gray skies and spattering of rain drops.
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Partridge Foot, Luetkea pectinata,
First I've Seen Since the Chugach Range in Alaska |
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| Growing in the Moraine, Yellow Coralbells, Elmera racemosa |
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| A Sedum in the Scree |
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North From the Saddle, Cirque Lake and Snow, Foreground
Mount Jefferson, Background |
Truth be told, a primary motivator for this hike was the possibility of seeing Mountain Goats, one of the very few large animals in the US that I have never seen before. My wife has bestowed the unofficial trail name of Mountain Goat upon me for my ability to go uphill relatively easily, so I thought it fitting that I should at least be able to see one just once in my life. I struck out on seeing any in Alaska and given my luck, I wasn't really expecting to see any here in Oregon. And also, eyesight is not a strength of mine and eyesight is sorely needed to pick out creatures at great distances.
I am hopelessly nearsighted and really cannot focus on anything beyond 30 yards, though I see color and motion well. I have learned to compensate for terrible eyesight by being able to pick out that which does not belong, a spot of color in the wrong place or something moving against the wind. I cannot see a damn thing at 100 yards, but I am the guy that can point out the white head of a Bald Eagle at 600 yards. And for identifying birds, I have learned their behavior (how they fly, how they perch, etc.) and their songs to help my poor eyesight.
And that brings me back to my scramble up the remnants of the glacial moraine/talus/scree to the saddle on Three-Fingered Jack. Every 100 feet or so of elevation, I would stop and scan the cliff walls around me. About the second time I looked, I saw something white where something white did not belong. Can you spot the anomaly in the picture below?
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| Do You See a Goat? |
I snapped a photo and then enlarged it to see what I was looking at, another trick that I use frequently to augment my eyesight, as in picking out Ann among all the paddleboarders on a lake 600 yards away. Bingo: Mountain Goat, meet Mountain Goat! I only saw one, but one was enough and made my day. I continued to climb to the point where I was level with it and where I shot the photo below. After that, I continued up as far as I could to the saddle, beyond which you cannot go without technical gear and after which, people have died, good climbers even, as the fragile stone flakes away easily.
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| Meadow Money Shot: a Riot of Color |
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| Expand This Photo and Marvel at the Flowers |
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| Creek Bank Full of White Marsh Marigold, Caltha leptosepala |
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| A Large 2-3cm Erigeron |
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| Orange Paintbrushes, Royal Blue Larkspurs |
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| Larkspur, Delphinium sp. |
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| Boykinia major |
Back down to the maintained part of the trail, we then forked left along the creek taking the part of the loop trail that we had not taken on the outbound hike. We then re-entered the burned area and in the misty day punctuated by random rain drops, it seemed at times as if we were hiking in a ghost forest.
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| Can You Spot Ann? |
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| Ghost Forest in the Mist |
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Not Quite Ripe and Seedy Berries, Probably
Thin-Leaf Huckleberry, Vaccinium membranaceum |
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Fireweed, Chamaenerion angustifolium,
Not as Common in Burn Area as I Expected |
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Unripe Berries: Sitka Mountain Ash, Sorbus sitchensis, center
and Littleleaf Huckleberry, Vaccinium scoparium, lower left |
One charming feature of walking on the return part of the loop through the burned area was the large stands of glowing white Pearly Everlasting. Each time I would spot a large patch, I would round a corner and see an even larger one. At one point, I was looking down a hillside that was probably an acre of white blooms.
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| Very Pretty Pearly Everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea |
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| Ann and Trail Surrounded by Pearly Everlasting |
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| Shaggy Moss on Tree Trunks |
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| Green Alder with Cones, Alnus alnobetula |
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Woodland Beardtongue, Nothochelone nemorosa
Blooms Similar to Penstemons, Plants Very Different |
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| What Does the Fox Say? |
By the time we reached the car park, we hiked about 7-1/2 miles together and my scramble up to the saddle at Three-Fingered Jack probably added another 1/2-mile to my total. We started about 5100 feet and I probably topped out about 6900 feet up on the mountain, Ann a few hundred feet shy of that. Filthy from miles of dust, we piled into the car and headed into Sisters to get a pizza before going back to Bend. We had heard good things about Boone Dog Pizza at The Barn. The crust was really excellent; the toppings get 4 out of 5 stars. This was easily the best pie we've had in Central Oregon.
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| The Barn in Sisters |
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| Good Pizza from Boone Dog |
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| Contented Hikers |
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